Keep your waist to less than half your height, guidance says

26 comments
  1. Put it right along will this other great advice;

    Keep your insulin levels between 2 and 6 mcU/ml. To avoid diabetes.

    Maintain a healthy mental state to avoid mental health problems.

    Keep growing hair on your head to avoid baldness.

  2. I’m 5’6 and have a 26″ waist. I wouldn’t consider myself healthy though because about 60% of my meals for the last year have been takeaway or meals out, and I haven’t really exercised for the past 6 months

  3. Fairly sure I’ve heard this before. It’s frustrating though because round your waist is one of the hardest places to lose fat from long term.

  4. At 5’9, half my height would be 34.5 inches. I reckon I’d have to be over 30% bodyfat to exceed that waist size, so the guidance seems pretty reasonable.

  5. Sounds like we are really lowering standards here. Seems quite an easy thing to achieve ( if you’re above 180cm at least. Sorry short people=

  6. This guidance is pretty generous tbh. If it’s a middle ground to give people a more reasonably goal in body weight then I’m all for it. We’re fast catching up to the US in obesity

  7. Just over 6ft and that puts it at ~36″ and yeah that is about the point where I begin to hate myself, actually impressed they’ve given such a reasonable and understandable target for once

  8. Love how they pointed out it doesn’t work for pregnant women.

    I always wonder with stuff like this… is anyone dumb enough to think it does? 38 weeks pregnant and measuring your waist, not realising the results won’t be valid coz it’s a baby in there, not fat? And does whoever wrote this at the BBC genuinly worry that someone would do this?

  9. For any/every one that didn’t read the article. Your “waist” here is not your trouser size, it’s the circumference of your belly.

    > “To measure their waist, they should find the bottom of their ribs and the top of their hips, wrap a tape measure around the waist midway between these points and breathe out naturally before taking the measurement.”

  10. >How to measure your waist

    >Find the bottom of your ribs and the top of your hips.

    >Place a tape measure around your middle at a point halfway between them (just above the belly button).

    >Make sure it’s pulled tight, but isn’t digging into your skin.

    >Breathe out naturally and take your measurement.

    >Take your measurement again, just to be sure.

    [https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/medical/measuring-your-waist](https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-magazine/medical/measuring-your-waist)

    ​

    >For men, a waist circumference below 94cm (37in) is ‘low risk’, 94–102cm (37-40in) is ‘high risk’ and more than 102cm (40in) is ‘very high’. For women, below 80cm (31.5in) is low risk, 80–88cm (31.5-34.6in) is high risk and more than 88cm (34.6in) is very high. These are the guidelines for people of white European, black African, Middle Eastern and mixed origin.

    >For men of African Caribbean, South Asian, Chinese and Japanese origin, a waist circumference below 90cm (35.4in) is low risk, and more than that is ‘very high risk’ (there isn’t a ‘high risk’ category). For women from these groups, below 80cm (31.5in) is low risk, and anything above is very high risk.

  11. We missed the big chance to get people to lose weight at the height of covid restrictions. It really should’ve been put alongside social distancing and hand washing

  12. Lots of arguments in this thread about the relative expense of healthy vs. unhealthy foods.

    For the price of a cabbage and a couple of onions I can buy *multiple kilograms* of pasta. And the pasta will keep me alive a hell of a lot longer. Boggles the mind that people need to have this explained to them. Calories are cheap. Nutrition is not. Most of you have no conception of what ‘poor’ really means and it shows.

    I’m doing fine now but there have been periods in my life when I was literally living on water and bread. You don’t think I would have preferred a nice vegetable stew or something?

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